July 2004

One of the things I've always found most interesting about photographs from Mars isn't the planet itself – its landscapes and geology – but the strange visual style associated with the images: spliced together from multiple stills, the edges of the photos break up into black rectangular voids, as if the scene has been consumed by Russian Suprematism, the revenge of art history coming back to us from offworld sources.Malevich as landscape photographer.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see the same approach used to the same effect, whether intentional or not, in these photos of Mt. Snowdon, Wales, taken by Flickr user Stuey G.

In other words, because of the culturally recent Martian resonance of spliced photography, these scenes from the earth appear unearthly; the topography – for me, at least – seems strangely removed from terrestrial expectations. This isn't Wales, the style implies, but some new terrain altogether, geologically other.

Or not, of course, in which case you just think these look like photos of Mt. Snowdon; but take several hundred more of these things, write some text – and soon you've got a new planetary narrative: discovering other worlds, right here on earth beside us.

(For more Mars photos, see NASA; for more Snowdon photos, see Stuey's Snowdonia page. On an unrelated note, Mr. G. understandably loves his new ground-radar machine).

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